“Nothing happened here but what you did,” Ella Dane said.
No wonder the jury had convicted Beth Craddock so quickly. Probably her clothes were wet. Lacey felt cold all over, as if she had walked from a summer rainstorm into an air-conditioned room. Drew put his hands into Beth’s as into a pair of winter gloves and used her to kill the baby. Because Drew was the child of the house, the only child. What had she known, what had she seen?
“Mom,” Lacey said. “Does this mean he’s inside me? He can make me do whatever he wants? What am I going to do?”
Before Ella Dane could answer, a car horn blared outside, long and continuous. Ella Dane ran outside, and Lacey followed more slowly, careful on the porch steps. Her question would have to wait.
Chapter Twenty-five
A BEIGE CHEVROLET bumped over the curb, crossed the sidewalk in front of Harry’s house, crushed an azalea, and stopped with its nose pressed against a dogwood. The dogwood shook its leaves like a thousand agitated hands. The horn stopped, and in its silence came another sound, an alarm cry of, “Oh, oh, oh,” a man’s voice with the intonation of a distraught child. Lacey stepped forward by instinct, ready to hug someone and say It’s okay, but Ella Dane held her back.
Harry came out of his house, violin tucked under his arm. He took one look at the Chevy, stepped back inside, and came out without the violin. “Lex?” he said, hurrying across the lawn. “Are you okay?”
A man got out of the car, still crying, “Oh, oh, oh,” like a child. He was almost as tall as Harry but dangerously thin, with a face so drawn it was impossible to tell his age.
“I know him.” Ella Dane let go of Lacey’s arm. “He’s the produce manager at MacArthur’s.”
Now it was Lacey’s turn to hold her mother back. “Stay out of it! You don’t know anything about him.”
“Last week he saved me some really ripe mangoes. Beautiful, like fresh jam. Hey, Mr. Hall—Lex! Are you okay?” Ella Dane ran toward the car, reaching it just as Harry did. “Oh, and thank you again for those gorgeous mangoes.”
The surprise of this greeting finally stopped that awful wail. The thin man turned his blank, haggard face toward Ella Dane and said, “Mangoes?”
Lacey began to hear the sound of a crying baby. She turned to look behind her at her own house. Was this some trick of Drew’s, or another voice of the house, little Tyler Craddock? No, it came from Lex Hall’s car.
“She won’t stop,” Lex said. Harry pulled him away from the car, while Ella Dane opened the back door and lifted out a naked orange baby. “I can’t make her stop.”
Ella Dane sniffed the baby. “Yams?”
Bibbits joined them, dancing on his hind legs, trying to get a taste of the baby. Ella Dane set the baby down on the grass, and the baby promptly rolled over on her back, giggling while Bibbits dashed around her, licking any part of her he could reach.
“She won’t stop crying,” Lex Hall said again.
“She’s fine,” Ella Dane said. “Happy as a june bug.”
“She’s hungry.”
“If she was hungry, the yam would be inside, not outside.”
Bibbits licked yam off the baby’s nose. She crowed with joy and grabbed his ears. He yelped but, to Lacey’s surprise, did not bite. Lacey knelt and pulled the baby’s hands off the dog’s ears. “Don’t hurt the doggy,” she said. Bibbits barked, whined, and licked the cookie crumbs off Lacey’s hands.
“Obby, oof oof,” the baby told her.
“Doggy says woof woof. Good doggy.”
“We’ll clean her up,” Ella Dane said. Emergency, as always, brought out the best in her. Lacey knew she had not forgotten Drew, and as soon as she’d dealt with this baby, she’d turn her mind to the problem. “I need a towel. Does she have clothes?”
“They’re at home,” Lex said wretchedly, like a conscientious child who had forgotten his homework for the first time. “Her diapers and everything.”
“Then you’d better go get them,” Ella Dane said, and Lex hurried back to his car. Harry ran into his house and came back with a brown towel, and Ella Dane swaddled the baby. Seeing the dangerous hands restrained, Bibbits started licking the baby’s face. Harry held out his arms for the baby, but Ella Dane held on to her and said, “Who is he, and why does he come to you?”
“Crazy nephew. Nobody else to go to when he needs help. And this is Theo.”
“He’s driving around with a naked baby in his car? Is there a mother?”
“They’re getting divorced. I’ll take the baby now.”